Des Plaines cuts its billboard fees

Court said city law was too restrictive

With their larger-than-life graphics and screaming messages, billboards have long been considered a blight in many of Chicago's suburbs.

But an attempt by Des Plaines to regulate billboards, in part by imposing hefty licensing fees, has landed the city in federal court.

On Monday, Des Plaines aldermen voted unanimously to abandon the fees in an effort to salvage the city's sign ordinance, which has been ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. The ruling tossed out not only the $15,000 licensing fee that Des Plaines required of billboard companies but also the city's zoning and size regulations for signs.

"The judge specifically noted she was troubled with the licensing fee," City Atty. David Wiltse said. "If this whole article is thrown out, then people could put billboards anywhere. There would be no restrictions. It's quite troublesome."

In the last decade Des Plaines has been involved in a series of disputes over billboards, the latest of which resulted in a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago in December by Covenant Media Inc.

Last week, U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow ruled in favor of the company and granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting Des Plaines from enforcing its ordinance.

"The court further found that the sign ordinance granted officials unbridled discretion to approve or deny a sign or permit application," Lefkow wrote in her ruling.

By dropping the licensing fee, Wiltse said, the city is hoping that Lefkow will allow the rest of the ordinance, particularly the zoning requirements, to stand. Otherwise, he said, Des Plaines risks losing all of its controls on billboards.

There are about 22 of the signs in town, a few of which do not comply with the ordinance because they were put up before the regulations were adopted, Wiltse said.

The current ordinance calls for all billboards to meet Illinois Department of Transportation standards regarding size and height and restricts their locations to within 660 feet of the Northwest and Tri-State Tollways.

Wiltse said Covenant Media applied in November for a billboard, which would have been built farther than 660 feet from the tollways. The application was incomplete and denied by the city, Wiltse said.

The company applied for an additional 11 billboard permits after the lawsuit was filed, Wiltse said.

Morgan Hudgens, who identified himself as the owner of Covenant Media and several other advertising companies, said Covenant Media is a Georgia-based start-up that has been unfairly kept out of Des Plaines.

"We went out and applied for the billboard permits," Hudgens said in a telephone interview. "We felt we were denied unjustly."

Hudgens declined to discuss other aspects of his company, other than saying it currently owns two billboards in Oak Forest.

Covenant Media has filed similar lawsuits against Elgin and Alsip, Wiltse said. The company also has filed lawsuits in other states.

Des Plaines seems to have had its share of controversies over billboards.

In 2003 the City Council approved a 20-year deal worth almost $1 million that gave Premere Outdoor Inc.--which was co-owned by James Dvorak, a former Cook County sheriff's official convicted of corruption in the mid-1990s--the right to build 10 billboards. Within three months, the rights were transferred to other companies, officials said, and Wiltse later concluded that the market value of each of the 10 billboards was about $1 million.

Only three of those billboards have been built, including a 98-foot-tall sign that is about 100 feet from a house in the 2100 block of Estes Avenue.

In February the council voted to allow Viacom Outdoor Inc. to build five billboards along the Northwest and Tri-State Tollways. Four have been built.

Council members also have talked about banning lights on billboards.

"We want to protect the community from billboards," Ald. Laura Murphy said. "When you live in a residential area, you don't want to turn around and see it in your neighbor's yard.

"It is my hope, my desire, that billboards are limited to commercial areas along the highway."